Anyways, this idiom lesson is about:
to be a shoe in
This means that you think someone is sure to get a job/position or be picked for something. It means something/someone will definitely win.
John's a shoe in for the Assistant Manager position.
Who do you think will get the promotion? I think Tara's a shoe in!
Apparently, the correct spelling is "shoo-in" which I don't think I've ever seen until researching this lesson! Here's a good explanation I found posted by fireflyscout on College Confidential:
Shoo in is how I've always seen it.Just did a google search, and here's what I found:
This one is spelled wrongly so often that it’s likely it will eventually end up that way.The correct form is shoo-in, usually with a hyphen. It has been known in that
spelling and with the meaning of a certain winner from the 1930s. It came from
horse racing, where a shoo-in was the winner of a rigged race.
In turn that seems to have come from the verb shoo, meaning to drive a person or an animal in a given direction by making noises or gestures, which in turn comes
from the noise people often make when they do it.
The shift to the horse racing sense seems to have occurred sometime in the early 1900s. C E Smith made it clear how it came about in his Racing Maxims and Methods of Pittsburgh Phil in 1908: “There were many times presumably that ‘Tod’ would win through such manipulations, being ‘shooed in’, as it were”.
A rigged race is one where the winner has been (illegally) decided in advance. And from common errors in English usage they say:
"This expression purportedly comes from the practice of corrupt jockeys
holding their horses back and shooing a preselected winner across the finish
line to guarantee that it will win. A “shoo-in” is now an easy winner, with no
connotation of dishonesty. “Shoe-in” is a common misspelling."
So feel free to use shoe in or shoo in both are ok I think! Anytime you think someone is sure to win you can say:
She's a shoe in~!
Phil
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